Episode 1 and 2 Reaction
Foreward:
I have seen bits and pieces of Highlander: The Series in the 90s when it first aired and ran reruns regularly. But I have not watched it since maybe the early 2000’s. I have never watched the series in order in its entirety. Additionally, I have studied historical European sword-fighting and have practiced it and taught it fairly regularly since 2015. I am not going to critique the swords, techniques, or choreography of the series except in the context of story-telling. A good sword fight in a show or movie should tell a story, and the better job they do at telling a story, the more sins get covered up. Also, “realistic sword fights” are quick, boring, and messy, they rarely make for good cinema.
Episode 1 – The Gathering
Released October 3, 1992
I’m not sure I ever watched the first episode before this. If you haven’t seen the first episode, you might not know how the series connects to the movie(s) of the same name. I certainly hadn’t. Did Connor MacLeod become Duncan MacLeod?! NOPE! Of course not. I mean, they had to slightly retcon the end of the first movie, and completely ignore the second movie. There is no Highlander II: the Quickening. There is no planet Zeist. And this is a good thing. But neither here nor there, the first episode of the series is quite enjoyable. Very 90s. But it introduces our 3 main characters, and connects the series to the movie.
Duncan MacLeod, played by Adrian Paul, is getting it on with Tessa Noel, played by Alexandra Vandermoot (really, that’s how the episode starts), when a thief/burglar Richie Ryan, played by Stan Kirsch, breaks into their “store”. Duncan feels something is amiss and puts on pants and grabs a sword. He then surprises Richie and then in quick succession we meet Slan Quince, played by Richard Moll, and Connor MacLeod, played by Christopher Lambert. And the series is off and running.
Okay, more like sashaying. There is nothing pushing the episode forward, it really just seems to saunter from plot point to plot point. Not that it’s a bad thing. It felt like all of the relevant information has room to breathe. Slan Quince is a “villian of the week” Evil Immortal whose job is to threaten the people Duncan loves to get him back into the game and fighting other immortals. He’s like a diet Kurgan, kinda menacing, but doesn’t get to go too far with his depravity. And while Richard Moll did good, and has a bunch of credits in other tv series (Bull from Night Court?!), he isn’t quite Clancy Brown. But really, he’s there to get Connor to convince Duncan to get back to fighting.
By the way, they’re clansmen about 60-ish years apart. Connor taught Duncan the rules of the game, like he was taught by another. Duncan and Connor spar with swords a few times. Richie watches them. Duncan tries to get Tessa to leave “for her own safety”. etc etc. By the end Slan is dead; Connor advises Duncan to watch Richie and Tessa reunites with Duncan; and Connor leaves to go fight other Evil Immortals.
I’m trying not to just summarize everything that happened in the episode, but this first episode had a bunch of important stuff going on. It’s setting up the characters, the setting, and the framework for an entire series based off of most of one movie and ignoring an entire other movie that shares its name. Duncan is tall, dark, handsome, and mysterious. Tessa is artistic, hot, and has a distractingly cute French accent. Richie has boyish charms and a myschevious nature. And Connor is gritty, dispenses plot, and chuckles his Christopher Lambert chuckle, then departs the series completely.
The sword fights were campy and fun and appropriate for the story beats they took place in. There were flash-backs to establish history between Duncan and Connor, something that became a mainstay of the series. The least plausible thing to happen was snaring Richie into sticking around. I give it an A. It was a good episode and a great first establishing episode for the series.
Episode 2 – Family Tree
Released October 10, 1992
If I could describe this episode succinctly, it would be a 90s tv series “Found Family” special mixed with a villain of the week. The episode quickly establishes the bad guys and their motivations (money), and Richie is the patsy that drives the plot forward by searching for his parents. He gets conned in that “I want to believe this conman is my father” kind of way while Duncan is trying to protect him and warn him that he’s being dumb. Tessa is supportive of Richie and reminds Duncan that not everyone has been looking over their shoulder for 400 years, so stop being so cynical. And Duncan gets to empathize with losing his family after he came back from being dead, and gets to be a badass when he confronts the loan sharks the conman owes money to.
I’m being pretty brief with this episode because it really has no lasting effect on the series. It’s a pretty standard world-building kind of episode. The stakes aren’t high, or at least they don’t feel like they mean anything, but it helps to build out the dynamic of our main characters. The villain of the week is hardly menacing, except for the few moments that they are, which quickly get defused by Duncan. Overall, a pretty “meh” episode. I give it a C. Nothing bad, but nothing noteworthy.
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